Photography courses 2018-19 in central Edinburgh

We’re running a series of photography courses at our fully equipped studio in central Edinburgh just ten minutes walk from Waverley station (see map below). The courses are aimed from beginner to intermediate level and cover a whole overview of how to take control and how to see photographs.

The courses are taught by two highly experienced professional photographers who have been widely published in magazines and regularly exhibit around the world. Among other things, Sylwia has a postgraduate degree from Edinburgh College of Art (MFA), and Simon is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society (FRPS) as well as an MA from Oxford University. Here’s more about our bio.

Images by Simon Crofts

Don’t worry too much about what kind of camera you have - the courses are suitable for pretty much all kinds, whether digital or film - but it is best to have a camera that allows you to take control of exposure settings eg. that has different modes including an ‘M’ or ‘Manual’ mode, or some other way of controlling aperture and shutter speed.

There are four different courses, each of which consists of four evening or weekend classes. You can do each course one after the other, or just skip to the one that interests you most.

All the courses include some practical exercises and constructive critique of the student’s images.

Courses are run based in our spacious fully equipped photography studio in central Edinburgh

For the person who thinks: “I love photography and taking pictures but I’ve been letting my camera control how I take the pictures, I use it in auto mode and don’t really understand how what the different modes on my camera do, how to use Manual mode, and I’d love a clear explanation that lets me take control of my camera.”

“OK, I understood my camera, I know my f-stops from my bus stops, I can work in Manual mode and work with aperture, shutter speed, ISO and focussing. Now I would like to apply it all in practise.” Then this course is for you, and you might want to skip the ‘Level 1 Understanding your camera’ course.

There’s more emphasis on the practical application of the basic knowledge, and starting to develop your own way of seeing.

This course actually isn’t just about light - it takes all the themes in the first two levels and develops them further, but we’re going to do that while dancing around with the theme of ‘light’, including not only taking advantage of the various types of natural light, but also the use of portable flash, both on- and off-camera, and other sources of light.

This is either for the intermediate or more advanced photographer who knows all the basics thoroughly and would like to skip straight away to going deeper into how to develop a visual language - or for the student who has gone through the other courses above (though in either case, we’d strongly recommend doing the ‘Seeing the light’ course in any case). This is intended to take photography a beyond understanding the basic technical aspects (though there will be reminders of this along the way) and further into understanding what we should photograph, why and how. At the same time, we will also be looking at the next steps in technique, some tips around ways of working, trying some exercises, and critiquing the student’s work.

Studio photography course

Telling a story: photojournalism and documentary photography course

If you’re interested in these, let us know by dropping us a line in the form below

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Scheduling times, and special requests

Please just ask us! We like to adapt our classes so far as possible to concentrate on what is of most interest to attendees. If there is something in particular you would like to know more about, or if the dates/times of classes aren’t convenient for you, let us know, and we'll see what we can do.

Also, because we are practising professionals working for editorial and commercial clients, it may on rare occasions be necessary to reschedule a class. When this is necessary, we will look for a date which is mutually convenient, or make alternative arrangements to make sure that you don't miss out!